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NASA Audio File

NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) will use extremely sensitive infrared cameras to map the sky in search of the nearest and coolest stars, clues to the origins of stellar and planetary systems, and the universe’s most luminous galaxies.

WISE will orbit the Earth about 15 times a day, mapping the sky one-and-a-half times during its planned nine month mission.

CUT 1 (:21) – Wright: So, WISE is taking a four color image every 11 seconds, this is very fast for a space astronomy mission. And as a result WISE will take millions of images over the mission. We will stitch these together to form a panoramic of the whole sky. And on this view we’re going to see many interesting asteroids, stars, and galaxies. › Play Now

Amy MainzerDeputy Project Scientist

CUT 2 (:20) – Mainzer: WISE is an all sky infrared survey so you can kind of thing of it as the GPS map to the universe in the infrared. And as such its going to show us things that are some of the most distant objects in the universe like far-away galaxies, but it’ll also teach us a lot our Earth very nearest neighbors - the asteroids and the comets. › Play Now